There have been a surprising number of S65 V8 failures. Some of these have been with supercharged motors and often times fanboys and tuners alike would engage in a mud slinging campaign pointing to a competing tuner as the reason for the failure. The fact of the matter is, the S65 V8 seems to have an inherent weakness. It's wet sump oiling system does not seem to evenly lubricate the bearings which eventually leads to a failure.

This issue is not just seen on supercharged cars but stock cars as well. We have been speaking about Sal@evolve and here is what he had to say:

Originally Posted by Sal@evolve

We have seen 5 cars here ourselves blow out Cyl no 5 in the exact same way as this case.
Most cars were stock and blew at medium load around mid rpm's under normal driving.

On the 2 cars that were out of warranty we decided to check by bore scoping and found pistons to be heavily damaged, spark plugs damaged and pieces of valve moving around inside or make their way into the stock CAT's.

We know our local dealers here know of even more but won't talk too much about it. So there are more than just the ones we have seen.

Even on the cars out of warranty BMW UK replaced the engines without question! They did try to charge labour on these cars but even then the owners gave a small fight and they gave in. What does this tell you?

To reiterate -- all cars had cyl no 5 blow out.

This is in our opinion a problem with the cyl head in the cyl 5 area on some cars. Not cam timing based either as if it was then you would have other pistons damaged too.

While I was in Dubai last month I saw another car blow Cyl no 5 and that's again running stock tune.

I know for a FACT that other tuners know about some cars blowing Cyl 5 and it surprises me they don't post about it when something bad happens to a tuner.

Sal believes there is a defect that affects cylinder 5. Gintani in the video mentions an issue with the rods of the back cylinders. Sal believes it is an issue in the head. It may be a combination of these factors but it is worth exploring.

What we do know is stock cars have failed. We do know the oil system does not seem to be up to par especially for motors driven hard. We know bearings are wearing unevenly. We know BMW did change part numbers on some of the bearings. We know BMW is replacing failed motors that have not violated their warranty with no questions asked. This is all strong evidence of a design defect.

Since there does seem to be a problem, will BMW do a recall? The answer is likely not. It is cheaper for BMW to replace the failed motors and simply wait this issue out until all warranties have expired. Redesigning the oil system is not something the BMW M of today will do. With the S54, the bearing defect in the motor was fixed with a recall due to pressure from the internet and the issue being made widely known.

We have evidence in the past that BMW is not perfect and makes mistakes. BMW is interested in profit above all else, that much is certainly clear. The only way for any of the issues with the S65 V8 to be corrected is for the community to pull together and begin documenting these failures. However, most tuners seem to be interested in taking advantage of any motor that fails which happens to be running a competing tune or kit and leveraging this against them instead of getting to the root of the issue.

Gintani has their own solution that we will not delve into further but it will be applied to the BimmerBoost.com M3. The reality of the situation though is to properly address a weak point in the oiling system it should be made a dry sump oil system. Not a cheap solution, but the proper one. Check out the Gintani video below.